RESEARCH INTERESTS

Early modern Britain and its Empire; Caribbean and Atlantic world; comparative empires; constitutional and legal history; history of crime, punishment, and courts; violence; state formation

BIOGRAPHY 

I study questions at the intersection of violence and the law in the 17th- and 18th-century British Empire. I am particularly curious about how metropolitan administrators and settlers advanced their aims by investing in legal infrastructure and claiming jurisdiction over violent criminal offenses. Relatedly, I examine how colonial courts situated conflicts over rights and authority between subjects and their governments. I am also keen on tracking the formation of some of today’s key legal ideas in and outside the imperial metropole. I focus primarily on the Caribbean and Atlantic, but hope to incorporate other parts of the globe as my work develops. 

I arrived at these issues as I moved from my BA (in history and religion) at Alabama and MA (in medieval and early modern studies) at Durham to my MSc (in criminology) at Oxford. I wrote theses on the social history of the murder-manslaughter distinction in Tudor England for the first two degrees. For the last, I completed a paper—awarded the Criminology Prize for Best Dissertation—partly on Belize’s 19th-century capital punishment regime. I was once a program specialist at the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Research Division and a Marshall scholar. My free time is joyfully occupied by my wife and dog, playing and watching sports, and listening to punk music. Please reach out with questions about common interests and/or history at Chicago.